Chapter 1: What inspired Sarah Kay's poem 'If I Should Have a Daughter'?
Tiesitkö, että joka neljäs yli 40-vuotias mies kokee virtsan karkailua? Se on todella yleistä, mutta siitä ei silti juuri puhuta. Tenamen suojat on suunniteltu erityisesti miehille. Huomaamattomat, varmat ja luotettavat. Ota tilanne haltuun Tenamenin avulla.
Hei kaikille, kuuntelee TED Talks Daily, jossa saamme teille uusia ideoita, jotka vahvistavat ystävyyttä joka päivä. Olen teidän järjestäjä Elise Hume. Tervetuloa takaisin minun Top 10 TED Talks, meidän ensimmäinen podcast-palvelu, jossa käsittelemme TED Talks-lista tehtävää arkkivista tehtäväämme tällä hetkellä yhteen.
We're going back a decade for this next one. So far back, in fact, that it precedes the birth of this podcast, which started in 2014. But after reflecting on what it means to consider our future selves with Dan Gilbert and Shankar Vandantam, I can't think of a better talk to share next than the one from poet Sarah Kay. It's her first ever TED Talk and performance, and it's from 2011. Sarah was in her early 20s when she performed this beautiful gut-wrenching poem called
If I Should Have a Daughter. I find the words and the performance of this poem so moving and especially meaningful to me since I do have three daughters myself. But this is the sort of piece that will hit you whether you're a parent or not. To this day it remains one of the most prescient talks I have ever heard. And if you haven't heard this one before, you might want to have some tissues handy. If I Should Have a Daughter.
Instead of mom, she's going to call me Point B. Because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint the solar systems on the backs of her hands. So she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, oh, I know that like the back of my hand.
and she's gonna learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach, but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
There is hurt here that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried.
Baby, I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick, I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke, so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him. But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix.
Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix, but that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my mom taught me.
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Chapter 2: How did Sarah Kay's experience at the Bowery Poetry Club shape her journey?
Teknologiaa, ilmastoa, suunnitelmaa, perheesi, mitä olet syönyt yöpäivällä. Ainoa periaate on, ettei ajattele liikaa. Oletko valmiita? Mennään. Tässä on kolme asiaa, joita tiedän olevan totta.
I know that Jean-Luc Godard was right when he said that a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end, although not necessarily in that order. I know that I am incredibly nervous and excited to be up here, which is greatly inhibiting my ability to keep it cool. And I know that I have been waiting all week to tell this joke. Why was the scarecrow invited to TED? Because he was outstanding in his field.
I'm sorry. Okay, so these are three things I know to be true. But there are plenty of things that I have trouble understanding. So, I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, oh, that's what this is all about. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.
Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person. When I was a freshman in high school, I was a live wire of nervous hormones.
I was underdeveloped and overexcitable. Despite my fear of ever being looked at for too long, I was fascinated by the idea of spoken word poetry. I felt that my two secret loves, poetry and theater, had come together and had a baby.
a baby I needed to get to know, so I decided to give it a try. My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant.
and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was mainly indignant, so I thought that that's what was expected of me. The first time that I performed, the audience of teenagers hooted and hollered their sympathy, and when I came off stage, I was shaking. I felt this tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see this giant girl in a hoodie sweatshirt emerge from the crowd. She was maybe eight feet tall and looked like she could beat me up with one hand, but instead she just nodded at me and said,
I really felt that, thanks. And lightning struck. I was hooked. I discovered this bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side that hosted a weekly poetry open mic, and my bewildered but supportive parents took me to soak in every ounce of spoken word that I could. I was the youngest person there
At least a decade. But somehow the poets at the Bowery Poetry Club didn't seem bothered by the 14-year-old wandering about. In fact, they welcomed me. And it was here, listening to these poets share their stories, that I learned that spoken word poetry didn't have to be indignant. It could be fun, or painful, or serious, or silly. The Bowery Poetry Club became my classroom.
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Chapter 3: What are the three steps in Sarah Kay's spoken word journey?
Ja tässä tapahtuu. Ja tässä on se, mitä löydät myös, jos aloitimme kertomaan listamme äänellä. Jotenkin ajattelit, että joku on samaa asiaa tai jotain eri asiaa kuin sinun listassasi. Ja sitten joku muu
Something the complete opposite of yours. Third, someone has something you've never even heard of before. And fourth, someone has something you thought you knew everything about, but they're introducing a new angle of looking at it. And I tell people that this is where great stories start from. These four intersections of what you're passionate about and what others might be invested in. And most people respond really well to this exercise.
But one of my students, a freshman named Charlotte, was not convinced. Charlotte was very good at writing lists, but she refused to write any poems. Missed, she'd say, I'm just not interesting. I don't have anything interesting to say. So I assigned her list after list, and one day I assigned the list ten things I should have learned by now. Number three on Charlotte's list was, I should have learned not to crush on guys three times my age.
I asked her what that meant, and she said, Miss, it's kind of a long story. And I said, Charlotte, it sounds pretty interesting to me. So she wrote her first poem, a love poem, unlike any I had ever heard before. And the poem began, Anderson Cooper is a gorgeous man.
Did you see him on 60 minutes racing Michael Phelps in a pool? Nothing but swim trunks on, diving in the water, determined to be the swimming champion. After the race, he tossed his wet cloud white hair and said, you're a god. No, Anderson, you're the god.
I know that the number one rule to being cool is to seem unfazed. To never admit that anything scares you or impresses you or excites you. Somebody once told me it's like walking through life like this.
You protect yourself from all the unexpected miseries or hurt that might show up. But I try to walk through life like this. And yes, that means catching all of those miseries and hurt, but it also means that when beautiful, amazing things just fall out of the sky, I am ready to catch them. I use spoken word to help my students rediscover wonder, to fight their instincts to be cool and unfazed, and instead actively pursue being engaged with what goes on around them, so that they can reinterpret and create something from it.
It's not that I think that spoken word poetry is the ideal art form. I'm always trying to find the best way to tell each story. I write musicals, I make short films alongside my poems, but I teach spoken word poetry because it's accessible. Not everyone can read music or owns a camera,
Kaikki voivat kommunikoida jossain tavalla, ja kaikilla on tarinoita, joita me toiset voimme oppia. Lisäksi puhelinpäätöksentekijöiden saattaa olla täysin yhteyttä. Ei ole epäonnistunut, että ihmiset tuntevat, että he ovat yksin tai ettei kukaan ymmärrä heidät, mutta puhelinpäätöksentekijöiden opetus on, että jos sinulla on mahdollisuus esittää itseäsi ja vahvoisuus esittää niitä tarinoita ja mielipiteitä, voit olla kiinnostunut yksiköiden tai yhteiskunnallisiin, jotka kuulevat.
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Chapter 4: How does spoken word poetry help students express themselves?
I would like to help others rediscover that wonder, to want to engage with it, to want to learn, to want to share what they learned, what they've figured out to be true, what they're still figuring out. So I'd like to close with this poem.
When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini-supernova. So every living animal, human or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash. And what was left of the city soon followed. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder.
When I was born, my mom says, I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, this? I've done this before. She says, I have old eyes. When my grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, don't worry, he'll come back as a baby.
And yet for someone who's apparently done this already, I still haven't figured anything out yet. My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons, mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth. But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying.
Hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed. My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. In the original story, God told Sarah that she could do something impossible, and she laughed. Because the first Sarah, she didn't know what to do with impossible, and me...
Well, neither do I. But I see the impossible every day. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold on to others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk. They hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for. Every time I open my mouth, that impossible connection.
There's this piece of wall in Hiroshima that was completely burnt black by the radiation. But on the front step, a person who was sitting there blocked the rays from hitting the stone. The only thing left now is a permanent shadow of positive light. After the A-bomb, specialists said it would take 75 years for the radiation-damaged soil of Hiroshima city to ever grow anything again. But that spring, there were new buds popping up from the earth.
When I meet you, in that moment, I'm no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share your present. And you, you get to share mine. And that is the greatest present of all. So if you tell me I can do the impossible...
I'll probably laugh at you. I don't know if I can change the world yet, because I don't know that much about it. And I don't know that much about reincarnation either. But if you make me laugh hard enough, sometimes I forget what century I'm in. This isn't my first time here. This isn't my last time here. These aren't the last words I'll share. But just in case, I'm trying my hardest to get it right this time around. Thank you.
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